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About

Mission

/r/Fantasy is the internet’s largest discussion forum for the greater Speculative Fiction genre. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world.

We reserve the right to remove discussion that does not fulfill the mission of /r/Fantasy.

Vision

Build a reputation for inclusive, welcoming dialogue where creators and fans of all types of speculative fiction mingle.

Values

Respect for members and creators shall extend to every interaction.

Interact with the community in good faith.

Interactions should not primarily be for personal benefit. Personal benefit includes, but is not limited to: financial gain from sales or referral links, traffic to your own website/blog/channel, karma farming, critiques or feedback of your work from the community, etc. This also applies to you posting on behalf of your friend/family member/neighbor.

A couple of months ago, someone asked how they could help a debut author. This topic comes up a couple times a year, so I thought I’d write a full post about it.

Note: Some of these things don’t apply to authors wanting to hit the NYT bestsellers list, the USAT bestsellers list, etc. Also, some might not apply to those with big pub contracts who are struggling to keep those big pub contracts and are asking their readers for help differently than what I’m posting here. So take this as a general template, not an absolute for every single author out there.

The tl;dr list is here at the top to save you the trouble of scrolling:

Buy their book

Read their book

Review their book

Tell people about their book.

Join up for their mailing list or their whatever promo page (blog, facebook etc).

Share news about their sales and new releases for people.

Bask in the glory of being a hipster early adopter of this person

Buy their book

This is obviously obvious. The big question is which retailer and which format makes an author the most money. For authors with big publishers, /u/MarkLawrence did a huge blog post about it. He went through his contract and did a breakdown of earnings. Brian McClellan did the same here.

For indie authors, be it self-published or small press, it’s often best to buy their ebooks over print. Ebooks cost the authors a bit less to make (for more info, see my post An Indie Perspective on Book Costs. The major retailers pay 70% royalties to us on books over $2.99 (they pay 35-40% on books under $2.99).

Some authors also often books on their websites, including trad published authors. For example, if you are a fan of /u/JannyWurtsWars of Light & Shadow universe, you should head over to her website and pick up the three short stories. That way, you know all of the money is going directly to her.

So that’s all well and good, but what if you can’t afford to buy the books? There’s the obvious options – library, pirating (doesn’t matter one’s opinion, this is an option on the table), monthly subscriptions (Scribd, KU), and so on. In Canada, Canadian authors registered with the lending program are financially compensated for books checked out of the library. It’s not a 1-for-1 or anything, but it’s a bit of additional money to help off-set library lending.

Many authors offer review copies through their mailing lists, Netgalley (especially for Big Publishers), and LibraryThing. So those are other options for getting free books from your favourite authors.

I’ve been asked a few things about the subscriptions services. Yes, the authors are paid for those. The payment vary widely. Scribd pays out at full royalties. That means users have more limited access to books. There are more and more trad books on Scribd these days, and a lot of audiobooks being added now that they use the credit system. KU (Amazon) has a pool of money every month that is divided between everyone based on “page views” and additional bonuses for the top read authors. Right now, the general payout is about 0.0045 cents a page, but it fluctuates.

Review their book

Many of you have argued with me about what I’m going to say, so please hear me out before you yell at me in the comments. I believe strongly, especially for indie and small press authors, that Amazon.com reviews are the biggest help. Newsletter email ads are the standard way that small authors (and many big publishers) promote their sales on ebooks. However, the ad companies require a minimum number of reviews plus a high review score, often a 4 star average or higher. They only look at Amazon.com not anywhere else, including other Amazon sites.

You don’t need to buy the book on Amazon; you just need an Amazon account where you’ve bought things from before.

But what if you don’t want to review on Amazon? That’s fine. Goodreads is a good, solid place to review. It reaches a difference readership, sure, but it’s still reaches a readership. Some people don’t trust Amazon reviews and use exclusively Goodreads, so having a review there is going to help reach those readers.

If you really want to help an author, check their book on Barnes and Noble. If the reviews are being used as a chat room, please report this, especially if they mark all of their comments with 1 stars. Also, adding your real review there, no matter how critical, is significantly more helpful than a bunch of kids roleplaying during computer class.

Tell people about their book

This seems obvious, but so many people forget to do this. Share the book on /r/fantasy, Twitter, Facebook, and wherever else you go. Too often, the only books that are talked about are ones with massive advertising budgets behind them. They already have co-op table placement, face-out placement on the shelves, the pro reviews, and so on. A debut author with what Scalzi calls a Contemptible Deal isn’t getting any special treatment and could really use a boost.

Likewise, indies are still struggling with being called shitty hacks and openly mocked even though she doesn’t have a fucking day job no more and pays her fucking bills with her fucking royalties so get off her back DEEP BREATH for acceptance from their peers and other readers. If you like something one of them puts out, for pity’s sake, tell people about it. You might be buying them some fruit this month and helping them fight off scurvy!

Join up for their mailing list or their whatever promo

This is always a good idea because you can keep up with their sales and new releases. Many authors also have “street teams” whereby you can sign up for advance reader copies and chances to win prizes. Also, this is where you find about their lesser-known projects, such as short story collections, novellas, and side projects.

This also gives you the opportunity to share those sales and new releases with your friends and reading groups, and get to once again celebrate the genius of your favourite books.
I know that social media is tricky. Someone like John Scalzi can be polarizing. Someone like me can be annoying (I tweet endlessly about my breakfasts and my corgis; sometimes, my spaniel eating my breakfast…). That’s why I suggest mailing lists if you find their social media too much to handle.

I hope that helps a little and gives people some ideas on how to give a boost to their favourite authors, especially those who aren’t talked about very often.

*8. Start murdering their competitors in the genre to clear the field for them. Strike out the writing of their lives with the red ink of their blood. Yours will be the last rejection of their lives. Let no fool mercy stay your hand, for if they did not wish to die, why did they live thus? Make sure to coincide the slaughter with your favorite author's public appearances to provide them with an alibi.

*9. Don't forget to like their posts and comments on social media! Every little bit helps! ✿◕ ‿ ◕✿ ヽ(‘ ∇‘ )ノ (≧◡≦)

My debut novel is being published on April 5th, aka Tuesday, aka three days from now - and I am daunted by the efforts of promotion required once the initial splurge dies down. Any and all information is welcome. This post not only tells readers what they should be doing to help authors, but it tells fresh authors like me what we should be doing to encourage them / help them help you.

Second, there are 3 books I recommend new indie authors read. In fact, I recommend anyone with an advance under $30k to read them :D

David Gaughran's Let's Get Digital is about the nuts and bolts of indie publishing. It's to make sure you understand everything that's there, all of the features, and make sure you have a solid overview of things. Let's Get Visible shows how books are sold. It goes through the options available, what works and what doesn't, and why people make specific choices.

I can't remember the authors now, but Write, Publish, Repeat is really good after those two. It's about how not to waste your time and how to run the business side of your writing. It helps pull together everything you've learned and helps point you forward.

Some of the things won't apply to you if you're with a publisher - especially one of the big ones who don't usually work with their authors on promotions - but it's still helpful to understand the system. Plus, if you end up wanting to self-publish something, it helps get rid of the myths and lies that people will tell you down the road :D

Good reminder! Also, some authors use Amazon Ad Affiliates on their website, which means they make a couple of pennies every time you use one of their links to buy something from Amazon, even if it isn't what you clicked on originally. I am eternally grateful for the reader of mine who uses my AAA links to buy their quarterly turtle food...

Thanks for posting this! As someone who just published his first book, and is nowhere near dropping the day job yet, I can say that I want reviews more than sales even at this point. My opinion might shift once I get to a point where I can count on my writing as even a partial revenue stream, but at the moment I just want honest reviews to get more people looking at my stuff. Steal my book if you want, but review damn it! Haha

In a perfect world, everything would be perfect, where reviews are posted everywhere, in all languages, and in neon ;) But, yes, if you don't use Amazon/don't want to use Amazon/can't use Amazon, then Goodreads is your starting point for sure. Blogs, places like here, etc all help, too.

I don't use the main Amazons as in .com, .uk, .ca, so do the publishers monitor ratings on the other Amazons as well, like .in? I already rate everything on GR, I have been trying to write more reviews and if I like a book a lot, I usually post it here. Also this Bingo could see a lot more reviews from me

Sadly, Amazon.com is pretty much the only place a lot of the business side looks. But don't be discouraged. First, if you opt to copy your GR reviews over to .in or .uk, that still helps the customers who use those regional sites. Second, we have no idea if regional-targeted ads don't become a thing in the future with some of these companies (BookBub, for example, has already been experimenting with it). There might be more that crop up and will need more specific reviews on those sites. So it doesn't hurt anyone :)

And GR is a good place, too. I'm not saying it isn't. GR is used exclusively by a lot of readers, so it helps get visibility for some in a different way.

Well I am going to try to write reviews for my Bingo reads, so I was thinking of a three fold GR-Amazon-/r/fantasy review circuit. I usually also mention books I like a lot in the Malazan Empire, Westeros and 17th Shard fantasy fansite forums.

I am building my Bingo reading list right now. I am adding in an extra twist. Keeping in mind our old conversation about reading more female authors, I am trying to select a female author wherever possible.

I'm sure people will greatly appreciate it - both readers and the authors. That hits a lot of different readers that way, too, and by the very nature of bingo, you end up reviewing some books that aren't as commonly promoted as others!

Just by dint of 2015 being a year where I only read women authors, most of my bingo card ended up being women this year. I thought about trying to do all women, but I left myself not really enough time to finish, and my reading challenge this year is only books I own, so there's that additional problem. So what I'm saying is, it's absolutely doable :)

Well that is certainly encouraging to here! At the moment I am trying to construct my Magical Realism read, which will probably be my Waterloo. I have 4 listed, so I have options, but frankly I am a bit scared. I tried Marquez once and couldn't manage it at all.

In other categories I have a minimum of two listed, best case scenario being I read them as well.

It's less of a problem now with the new-ish website, but some still carried over from the old one. You could leave anonymous reviews without logging in. You'd end up with books that had 20+ reviews of kids roleplaying or chatting in the reviews.

Like, one of my books was nothing but this chat of kids chatting with each other. I've seen others that were elaborate roleplay games. Still others were people writing a one line at a time story in the reviews. Still others just leaving nonsense reviews: "I like yellow birds, 1*"

All of mine are gone now (it took a website change to get rid of them...they never got rid of them manually, unlike Amazon would), but I've come across the occasional one for friends' books still. So I just report it and they're better at getting rid of them now.

I'd guess that it has something to do with getting around filters on high school websites. The school may block all social media, and so the kids find non-social media sites that they can use on classroom computers.

This is such a great post though, and I'm so glad that this subreddit's community is receptive to it. We've all read fantastic books by people who "didn't make it" and groups like this make it easier for those lesser known authors to sustain themselves with something they love :)

I personally prefer the "nasty nasty nasty, your wife will hate you reading this" 1* reviews, but I'll also take the other ones.

From a professional level, those price complaints are so annoying because they're usually complaining about ROC books and those poor authors have no control over that the latest ROC ebooks are $18.99 in Canada.

From a reader perspective, holy shit fuck, the latest ROC ebooks are $18.99 in Canada, let's get out of the pitchforks.

I think if an ARC has been released, you can go ahead and post your review. Usually they're done for promotion, and reviews are promotion based on word of mouth. Just, obviously, review it without giving away spoilers.

Some publishers ask that you don't release your reviews until close to publication date. I'm not sure there's solid answer to this one. You can always ask the publisher/author if they have a preference if they don't specify.

It varies. I tell people what date I need their reviews up by, whereas I know some publishers who tell bloggers they can't put their ARCS up until a certain day. It's usually outlined when you get the ARC itself.

Thanks Krista! Its always interesting to hear about how one can help an author. Myke Cole just made a similar post on his blog, and said pretty much the same thing. Here's the post in case anyone is interested.

Huge thumbs up. As someone gearing to release my first indie novel in June, the search for reviews (or some other form of social proof that your novel is worth someone's time) is a frustrating experience. Most early-days indies I know would gladly trade a free copy of their books for the promise of an honest review.

Publishers? I have no idea. I suspect publisher interest in Goodreads varies depending on how much money they've put into Goodreads ads (yeah, I'm cynical).

Ad companies, such as BookBub, eReaderNewsToday, and so on, do not look at Goodreads reviews. Those are specifically for readers. Whereas, for better or for worse, Amazon.com reviews are for readers and the business side.

As for the Goodreads book ratings, they are still useful even though they are sometimes used as a sorting method as opposed to a "already read, reviewing, rating" method. It shows the level of interest in a book, which is still a good thing.